National consciousness and literary cosmopolitics
Subtitle: postcolonial literature in a global moment
By: Weihsin Gui
Series: Transoceanic studies; Transoceanic studies
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
Published: 2013
Place of publication: Columbus
Language: eng
Number of pages: 220
ISBN-13: 9780814212301; 9780814293324
Subjects: Nationalism and literature; Nationalism in literature
Description: National Consciousness and Literary Cosmopolitics: Postcolonial Literature in a Global Moment by Weihsin Gui argues that postcolonial literature written within a framework of globalization still takes nationalism seriously rather than dismissing it as obsolete. Authors and texts often regarded as cosmopolitan, diasporic, or migrant actually challenge globalization's tendency to treat nations as absolute and homogenous sociocultural entities. While social scientific theories of globalization after 1945 represent nationalism as antithetical to transnational economic and cultural flows, National Consciousness and Literary Cosmopolitics contends that postcolonial literature represents nationalism as a form of cosmopolitical engagement with what lies beyond the nation's borders. Postcolonial literature never gave up on anticolonial nationalism but rather revised its meaning, extending the idea of the nation beyond an identity position into an interrogation of globalization and the neocolonial state through political consciousness and cultural critique. -- Publisher website.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 201-210) and index.